Jon Miller, Author at Gemba Academy

Jon Miller

Jon has dedicated his 25+ year career to the field of kaizen, continuous improvement, and lean management. Jon spent the first eighteen years of his life in Japan, then graduated from McGill University with a bachelor’s in linguistics.

1485 Articles

Three Core Beliefs Fundamental to Standard Work

By Jon Miller - October 22nd, 2018

Standard work and kaizen are often described the two cornerstones of the Toyota Production System house, a.k.a. lean management. The various systems, methods and tools that make up the lean way of working rely on setting provisional st

Review of Four Types of Problems by Art Smalley

By Jon Miller - October 15th, 2018

The new book by leading lean thinker Art Smalley titled Four Types of Problems is available from the Lean Enterprise Institute. Problem solving is one of my favorite topics. I found myself both delighted by and disagreeing with parts

What’s the Best Way to Deploy Lean? TPS? DBS? HOS? Other..?

By Jon Miller - October 8th, 2018

The General Electric company has had a rough year. They were removed from the Dow Jones list after more than 100 years. Their stock price has dropped to half. This week they abruptly fired their CEO. On the bright side, Larry Culp, a G

Lessons in Problem Solving from the NFL

By Jon Miller - October 1st, 2018

As we wrap up week #4 for the 2018 season of America’s favorite athletic competition-based entertainment, the National Football League has already given us an important lessons in effective problem solving. More precisely, they a

How to Win with 80% Effort

By Jon Miller - September 24th, 2018

There is an old Japanese saying that I have always liked. It is hara hachibu ni isha irazu (腹八分に医者いらず). It advises, “Eat until 80% full and you’ll need no doctor”. The equivalent English proverb is

How to Manage Continuous Improvement without Authority

By Jon Miller - September 17th, 2018

People with the title of “Continuous Improvement Manager” or similar often find that they have broad responsibilities but without the matching authority. The CI Manager may need to identify improvement projects. They may be

Top 10 Differences between Traditional and CI-Infused Problem-solving

By Jon Miller - September 10th, 2018

A customer asked last week whether Gemba Academy had a video comparison of solving a problem using a non-CI approach vs. solving the same problem with some basic CI tools and thought processes. While this is one of our favorite topics

Why We Need Standard Work on Vacation

By Jon Miller - August 27th, 2018

For over twenty years I traveled a lot on business and got pretty good at it. These two things almost must go together. A person who travels a lot and does so badly won’t be able to sustain it for very long. It becomes exhausting, st

An Argument in Favor of Jargon

By Jon Miller - August 20th, 2018

When a group of people use jargon, or specialized language to express ideas or concepts, it can make communication more efficient. On the other hand, Jargon can be difficult for people outside of the group understand. People who use j

How a Little Compassion Improves Outcomes

By Jon Miller - August 13th, 2018

In an inspiring TED video Stephen Trzeciak, a critical care doctor at Cooper University Health Care in Camden, N.J. explains How 40 Seconds of Compassion Could Save a Life. He begins, “In healthcare we in the midst of a compas

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